Sometimes, it just helps to get out and about. Friday’s Festival of Business, The Telegraph’s annual conference in Manchester, brought together more than 500 owners and supporters of mid-sized businesses (MSBs) in the UK to discuss growth, expansion overseas and the economy.

The mood was optimistic and unashamedly pro-business. Michael Fallon, the new business minister and a useful foil to Vince “City is a cesspit” Cable, said that if small businesses were the life-blood of the economy then MSBs were the muscle.

A focus on this growing sector is essential if Britain is to prosper. These are the manufacturers who are exporting, the professional service firms that are helping companies to expand and the technology companies hunting down the next big idea.

One speaker at the festival was Herwig Vennekens, the UK managing director of German sweet maker, Haribo, itself an MSB.

Mr Vennekens, a German, was speaking about the lessons the UK can learn from the famous Mittelstand, the mid-sized, often privately family-owned, businesses that relentlessly focus on often niche areas in which they become world leaders.

Examples include Faber Castell which has been making pencils on the outskirts of Nuremberg since 1761, and the audio-firm Sennheiser, which runs a high-tech manufacturing plant in the village of Wedemark near Hannover. The site is but a number of yards from the house where Fritz Sennheiser founded the business in 1945.

Mr Vennekens had a number of helpful thoughts for British business. Mittelstand firms rarely think of a sale or initial public offering as a route to growth. Quarterly reporting is rare and “discussions with analysts” almost unheard of. Mantras include “don’t invest what you can’t afford” and “if the business goes bankrupt the family goes bankrupt, no one wants that”.

Germany has its own specialised institute which studies the Mittelstand and Mr Fallon is now looking at encouraging the Office of National Statistics to regularly report on the UK’s MSB sector. As Grant Thornton’s report on MSBs released last week revealed, this often forgotten sector of 33,000 firms is contributing £285bn to the UK economy.

With this week’s GDP figure likely to show growth of 0.7pc and the public finances in better shape than initially thought, the Government must create momentum among our MSBs. There are green shoots out there. It is time to nurture them.

Osborne: Heathrow’s saviour?

On one of the few days when it wasn’t actually snowing last summer, George Osborne was guest of honour at the summer party of the think tank, Policy Exchange. In a few words to the assembled politicians, business leaders and general Big Brains in College Garden, Westminster, the Chancellor wryly pointed out that many of the think tank’s ideas had ended up as government policy.

That is to be expected. When in opposition, modernisers in the Conservative Party under the Cameron banner liked to use the think tank to float radical ideas. One of the Chancellor’s closest political confidants, Danny Finkelstein, is now chairman of the Policy Exchange board. When Policy Exchange speaks, Mr Osborne likes to listen.

So, when three weeks ago a report from the think tank on the UK’s aviation strategy was published it received less attention than it should have done.

The report was called “Bigger and Quieter” and argued for a far larger Heathrow with four new runways replacing the present two.

What is important here is not the precise detail of the plan (building west of Heathrow has some attractions but it is not clear why the present two runways should be demolished) but the fact that this is a plausible blueprint for a far larger airport where it should be – near London.

The expansion of Heathrow would utilise all the present infrastructure the airport has as one of the world’s leading hubs – terminals, fuel lines, transport links, cargo handling and aviation maintenance. These are all cost savings over any new “leap in the dark” proposal for a wholly new airport hub east of the capital.

It also pricks a hole in one of the main arguments of those suggesting the Thames Estuary option – that a single, limited new runway at Heathrow is merely a short-term fix and not a long-term solution.

How should BAA, the owners of Heathrow, react? They will play a waiting game, I am sure. With the aviation review by Sir Howard Davies not so much in the long grass as booted down to the deepest part of the forest, there is (some would say sadly) no hurry.

Over the next few weeks I expect a slow construction of “the case for Heathrow”. First will come the evidence that the UK needs a hub airport and not simply more point-to-point capacity which expansion at Gatwick, for example, would mostly provide.

That will be followed by work on the criteria that should be used for testing where Britain should have a new airport or airport expansion.

The green lobby - and many of the Conservative’s Liberal Democrat partners in the Coalition - would like the criteria to be almost wholly environmental. But economics, business need, competition with other European hubs, landing charges, funding costs (how much of any new money will be provided by the private sector and how much by a deficit-crippled state) and planning and construction time all have a role to play.

I am sure, ultimately, that BAA would like to put in a plan to Sir Howard far more ambitious than the “one shorter runway” project agreed in 2007. Senior figures close to the company certainly suggest that every option is open now the Prime Minister has called for yet another review.

You can hear the frustration in Steve Ridgeway’s voice when the outgoing chief executive of Virgin Atlantic wonders aloud in today’s interview with The Sunday Telegraph why the country loves the companies that manufacture planes or their engines – Airbus, Rolls Royce – but not the companies that fly them.

Officially, it is the Department for Transport that is “in the lead” on the airport expansion decision. But this is more than a transport issue and David Cameron and George Osborne know it. This is an issue that goes to the heart of the UK’s economic future.

Those close to Downing Street admit that ruling out the expansion of Heathrow before the last election was “a blunder”. The short-term politics of winning marginal seats around west London won out over long-term economic strategy. But, as with so many Government policies, there is the whiff of U-turn in the air. A slow U-turn, admittedly, but one that is to be welcomed none the less.

A year ago the expansion of Heathrow was declared dead in the water. At last, there are now signs of life.